Why Are Some Animals Curly?

Some animals, they're curly.

Some animals are not curly, just like us.

Some are curly, some are not.

How does that happen? So curly hair

happens in the wild.

And I think most of us are more familiar with it in domesticated animals.

But so how it happens at the base level is there's a gene for it.

Mm-hmm.

And the gene is called the Rex gene, R-E-X gene, which in Latin means king.

We are royalty.

We are

royalty, the curly top, yes.

So that's how it happens.

So there's a gene for it.

So a lot of that is just what you inherit genetically.

Now, among humans, we know that there's a relationship, for the most part, between our hair pattern and then the environment that our ancestors lived in.

We know among animals there's a relationship, too.

We don't tend to think of it in animals because it's not as prominent.

But what hair is, so think of it this way.

We use it in a lot of cultural ways.

But what a hair is, regardless of how curly, you know, regardless of your patterns, anywhere from 1A all the way up to 4C, it is a hint.

into how the folks or the things in your taxonomic background, it gives a hint into how they had to make a living.

And so here's the advantage of hair, curly hair.

Curly hair is really amazing from a thermal regulation point of view.

So it gives me...